


Staying Alive

by rabbitprint



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dominance, F/M, Female Character In Command, Homoromantic Irene, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:27:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2266311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irene/Moriarty, between S1-S2. Keeping yourself entertained can be such a challenge, sometimes. Thankfully, Irene knows how to keep Jim occupied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staying Alive

This isn't the kind of place that asks for your name. It's not the kind of place that deliberately avoids it either -- _those_ are in other districts, ho hum, so _ooo_ dangerous (but really not.) Dress up extra-dark, and pretend to be engaged in behaviors too illicit to have your identity pinned, nevermind the fact that your face will have been recorded a million ways over just by exiting from your car. Or by getting in with to begin with. Or by _breathing_.

No. Adler's domain doesn't mind if you give your name, because your identity is hardly the most worthwhile thing you have to offer. Jim picks her territory because many interesting people count themselves among her clientele, but _not_ because he wants to be one of them. He’s here to indulge his appetite, not be Entree #12 on the menu.

That she's good goes without saying; also, not on his criteria. Jim's pickier than that.

Wanting to be acknowledged isn't always a matter of vanity. Sometimes it's just wanting to know that you aren't alone in the world, filling the most primal form of social connections, hard-wired into the brain as deeply as eating and fucking. Human beings can't escape it. They can only become highly selective in their tastes. They can _concentrate_ those connections down to a few scarce individuals, distilled into counterproductive potency like caffeine metamorphosed into poison, indulging in a high so sweet it kills.

So. Adler. Irene. I- _ree-ee-ee_ -ne. Adler.

Who isn’t Sherlock, but he can overlook that: she’s not Sherlock, doesn’t _challenge_ Jim, can juggle her clients deftly and yet only dabbles in the criminal world. She doesn’t provide him with the lean, pale potential of Sherlock’s bones. Yet, in her own way, Irene helps keep Jim _going_ , just a little, and that’s important. Just enough. So easy to lose your edge when you’re alone. To get careless with boredom. To start thinking of _pets_ as _people_.

Adler does her part. She isn’t exactly like Jim, but she’s close enough to have him on the bed, on the table, on the floor; she isn’t exactly like Jim, but some days, that’s all that spares her. That’s _really_ the value in the continuing warmth of her skin. She’s an outlet.

It’s so vital to find ways to keep yourself alive.

Though, to be fair, Sherlock went looking too. With his _website_. Putting up his works for all to see even though he didn't have any interest in connecting with the people who'd read it, no respect for them whatsoever; what else _was_ that, but a walking advertisement? A vanity URL dating ad, that's all. _Hello, here I am, where are you?_

_Are you like me?_

So.

Of course, with Sherlock playing hard-to-get, Jim can't be blamed for filling up his calendar with other things in the meantime.

He leaves it up to Irene to select the details for their encounters, not really interested in if she's able to satisfy or not. He's never unhappy about the outcomes. Sometimes surprises are half the fun. She's inventive, which is useful, but what he _really_ enjoys is how she practices _on_ him, fulfilling her own indulgences, as if they’re both in the same room only by coincidence: there's a body, she's touching it, he's watching clouds through the window if they're both lucky. They intersect on a locational basis only. Anything more, and they might be tempted to fight.

Someday, they will anyway. Someday, maybe. Jim doesn’t care either way.

The two of them have what some might call, _a working relationship_. Jim’s come up with some of his best plans while under Irene’s ministrations. Irene gets to test out her techniques on a human canvas. It’s a _relationship_ : they get _so_ much _work_ done during it, and if not all of Irene’s experiments can be directly translated into Jim’s business, well, at least he gets to explore the limits of what sets off a body’s reactions like holiday lights, nerves buzzing and humming and _soooo_ sensitive to what could just as easily be a fresh razor blade. In different circumstances. _Oh._

Irene’s just so helpful for his creativity.

* * *

Today's playtime is more for Irene’s benefit than his. She’s experimenting, scrambling the lines between denial and indulgence for a client who’s been too eager to complain. Cuffs, tastefully padded. Spreader bar. Belts. Jim could have told her that the man’s whining is just a power game of its own, a limpid attempt at dominance where he fails in the bedroom and at life. He doesn’t tell Irene because she already knows, just as _she’s_ aware that he’s not going to stoop to mimicking the same simply to help her calibrate. 

It doesn’t work on Jim anyway, trying to make him beg. If he gets vexed, he’ll simply tune out entirely, ignoring his body like he might blot a particularly annoying dentist visit. Sex never _owns_ him, any more than a craving for a chicken nugget might. He doesn’t feel like pretending, tonight.

Instead, he talks.

Sentences melt butter-soft through layers upon layers of accents, like dropping a knife point-first through wedding cake. Syllables with alternating intonations, up-down, down-up. The sounds are there for flavor; it _does_ entertain him _so_ to sing.

Irene only gifts him back with a musing hum.

"You're being bo _ring_. Don't be boring." His voice is lilting, rippling over the words, because the words hardly matter at all. Irene can read him in his body; it's what she's paid to do. She's paid because she's good at it, but she's good at it because she _enjoys_ it. And she's typically better than this. Or maybe _he's_ just being stubborn. Moody. Justifiably irritated. Sherlock. So proud. So in denial. John won't last him forever.

"I could kill you," he murmurs, next, to both of them.

Irene’s chuckle is lazy, but there's enough tightness in the sound that it betrays her knowledge: Jim's not joking. "You said my biggest obstacle would be the Holmes boys." Her nonchalance coats the issue like caramel. Fingers skim over the muscles of Jim’s stomach. He categorizes each one, idly, until the pressure changes and she runs the edge of her nails into the skin, scraping lines that scatter all thoughts of _rectus abdominis_ away. (Her nails are shaped today; variables, predictability. Higher-risk activity, later.) "That hasn't changed?"

Soothed by the successful distraction, Jim switches mental tracks to the familiar topic, smooth and worn from overuse. She's handling him well. "The older one, primarily. He thinks on a wider scale. _He_ sees consequences -- and consequences, my dear Irene, are what you're all about, aren't you? The Iceman. _Ice._ " He hisses this last part, then breaks it off with a high-pitched bark of a laugh, self-mockery at the sibilants he'd uttered. Then he's whip-crack back to serious. "The little one is mine. The Virgin."

Irene's eyelids slip half-mast with intrigued curiosity, fettering ambition within her amusement. " _Is_ he one?"

"He certainly acts like one, doesn't he? Can you imagine how lovely he'd be, broken on your table? Ah, but he's not _yours_. He's not _for_ you." Now Jim’s mood's looping around to petty, like a child's hoop around a stick. He rolls his shoulders against the restraints, and makes a deliberately relaxed sigh, just for warning. He's not sure if he's diverted sufficiently yet. His thoughts are too _sharp_ when they surface, but they're rising less and less, like dolphins learning how to slowly drown underwater. 

Smooth fingernails glide down his arm. The sensation alternates between sharp and blunt, blunt and sharp. Jim mentally maps it like a missile trail. "Who said I'd want to keep him? Men like that are generally more trouble than they're worth in the long run, particularly if you retain them in close proximity." She laughs; Jim rolls his brain in the sound, until it drips like warm honey. "But he's interesting. I like being interested. Much like I enjoy the occasional round with _you_."

Jim shifts his weight on the bed, a restless and merely-functional gesture, stretching out his spine. "Then we have an understanding. Anyway, Sherlock might be frightfully tedious. He'd react by pushing it all away, trying to _analyze_ it, as if _that_ could keep him _safe_. His brother's so much more delicious. His brother knows about the dangers of reaction, and yet he indulges in emotion. It makes him _so good,_ " Jim purrs, letting the intonations ripple along the inside of his throat, all the way down to his toes, "but so _useless._ "

Irene chuckles, low and amused, in the way that tells him she’s not paying as much attention as she should.

She selects from her toolkit, plastic and metal clicking as she runs supple wands along his calves. He knows she is measuring him, rating the degrees that blood rises in his flesh, capillaries flooding, chemicals for arousal pumping into his brain and triggering the proper visible reactions. He’s being erotically quantified. Asphyxiated subject matter splayed out for dissection, numbers written down on charts. 

Technically ground Jim’s already covered, but from the other side. And none of the toys he used were silicone.

The restraints squeak when he flexes his wrists. (He never lets them stay too tight, not really. He's _intense_ \-- not stupid.) Irene pauses in her ministrations to watch him, tongue immobile inside her mouth. She weighs him. 

Then she reaches for the lubrication.

Irene doesn't bother with the blindfold, which is smart: it wouldn't do anything anyway except to _annoy_ him, make him replay the confines of the room over and over in his mind, remembering the angles, remembering the ways to get out, remembering the ways to get _in._ (Distraction, he needs a distraction.) Jim lets himself inhale in anticipation as he hears the pop of a plastic cap, the snap of a glove, the familiar rhythmic _slick slick slick_ of fingers rubbing together for even coating. Obscenely cool fingers gathering up his scrotum and rolling it against a palm. The brisk pull and tug of the cock ring as Irene fits it around him, adjusting him in short, firm touches until it fits just right. 

It’s not her little finger that she starts to rub against his asshole; Irene knows his tolerances better than that, but is enough of a tease to work with the ring finger first. Jim clenches once, _hard_ , just in warning around her knuckle, and she laughs deep in her throat. The finger slides deeper, a stiff angle that leaves him twitching around her, craving for her to curve against him, to stroke and taunt and give him something to fight.

She does. But only when the full joints of her finger are buried inside him, idly working him loose enough to take a second digit. Twice as thick, but only at the entrance: her little finger joining in the fun, wrist turning for a better angle, Jim shuddering against the relentless circles of pressure that he’s starting to lose track of despite himself. 

Irene takes her time in exploring him, a needless refresher course for someone who already knows the texture of his smooth muscle linings. Her other hand covers a femoral artery. Her knees are against his thighs, like two schoolchildren sharing a secret. And Jim -- Jim lets go for a little while, categorizing sensations and matching them to shape, matching them to intent, to musical cadences, to numbers, patterns, manipulations. To the sudden slack in his body as Irene slides her long fingers out, replacing it with the hard ball of her thumb as she fits it inside him. The wrinkled, flaccid texture of the gloves (one size too large) (why?) (caps) (her nails) as they bunch against his body. The dry air against the roof of his mouth when he gasps in counterpoint to the pressure, a wanton moan that’s fascinated by its own existence.

Jim catches his breath, and feels the cold, dense weight of the glass shaft nudging against his leg.

It rests there, docile, while Irene checks him over with methodical, professional care. Pupils for dilation, flush and color of his skin. Lips for dehydration. A brisk routine so practiced that it’s concealed in the guise of an affectionate caress.

"I think you're ready for more," she says, eventually.

She doesn’t bother to warm her toy up before positioning against his asshole, letting the ambient heat provide Jim’s only charity. The slender tip opens him up like a wedge, burrowing in shockingly far before it finds resistance. Jim’s muscles clench again, involuntarily, the tension redirected up into his spine as he struggles to relax against the intrusion, against Irene filling him up and forcing him to let go of resistance, the soldiers of his body surrendering one by one, retreating back under the cover of intellectual detachment. 

And Irene starts the slow rhythm of thrust, back and forth, each _forth_ going a little deeper each time, until Jim can imagine the whole thing impaling him in a glass line straight  _up_ , his body gathering it in greedily while her manicured hand grips his cock. 

She leans forward to tighten the belts to the bedpost, and he grunts a harsh negative. There are only so many types of stimulation that he’ll take, both for practical risks and personal taste. He won’t do total sensory deprivation. He’ll barely accept the loss of one. And he doesn't do humiliation because other humans humiliate him each _day_ by having to be among them, to have to play nicey-nice sometimes so he gets what he wants, setting up the dominoes just right for the proper blend of intimidation and bait. 

And frankly, he humiliates them back just as frequently, so shame: useless.

Besides, there's only one person he'd want to see on their knees anyway right now, just one. His thoughts flutter and flock to the name again, the name that's been haunting him ever since he first caught the scent of cheap ink on newsprint, a familiar shout into the emptiness of an unfulfilling world, _hello are you like me_. Advertising it with the finesse of a schoolyard shooting while sticking tick-close to the side of legality (as if that would change anything, such denial, such denial), pretending so desperately to be on the side of good that it’s become self-convincing _delusion_ , and to this, as Irene twists her toy inside him, Jim whispers,  _I will burn you, I will **burn** \--_

Irene claims him by surprise -- or his body is the culprit, responding so beautifully while his mind's off tripping through the underbrush, thinking of Sherlock with his knees spread on concrete floors. It would be beautiful, how the pressure of Sherlock's own body weight would pinch skin and flesh against bone, the prettiest start to little bruises along each patella, those paired calcium caps that Jim could cradle in the palm of his hand once removed from their owner -- and Adler takes him in the middle of that, _just_ as he's thinking about dismemberment. The timing's perfect. He feels his hips jerk.

Her hand _slides_ around his cock as she strokes upwards, fingers running over the veins until they're skimming the glans, and somehow the dildo’s deep enough inside him that no matter how he squirms, it’s shoving against some part of him too firmly to ignore, ( _Sherlock with his blog, what else **was** that but --_ ) the spreader bar bracing his legs apart, and he's hard, he's so hard that he tries to yank against the restraints, and he’s momentarily so hypnotized by visions of ripping them off and popping out Irene’s eyes that he doesn’t notice when she clicks the cock ring open. 

The relief is so sudden he almost comes from it right there. His hips buck up automatically against her grip. Irene doesn't let him escape back into his thoughts; her hand pumping him relentlessly, thumb running over the head of his dick, and Jim’s body is just _fine_ with this change in pace, already impatient with wanting to move on. He arches, and the rush of it is delightful in its potency, overmastering him completely. The fact that his own flesh subverts him is the _best part_ \-- he loves it rather than hates, because really, there's only one force in the world that can dominate him, and it is this:

Himself.

Which Irene understands, and her understanding is a large part of her value. She doesn't try to compete; she simply gives him the room to work on himself. He'd dominate himself in a heartbeat, but he gets _in the way_ of himself, and he can't -- he can't let himself relax enough to shake and shudder and spill over in sticky gouts on his belly and thighs, he _can't stop thinking_. _Just_ like he's already doing _now_ before the rush of orgasm is even complete, before the chemicals have finished processing and made the world _dull_ again. He’s spattered himself everywhere, all over the sheets and onto his own chest, and _sherlock sherlock sherlock_.

Irene keeps coaxing him, and by now the pleasure’s flipped entirely over to _pain_ , and not even a glistening, efflorescent sort of pain, but an awkward one that has him trying to spasm like a jackknife shut.

Immutably angry at himself, Jim bares his teeth, and drops flat against the bed, ignoring the last few twitches of his cock.

Irene doesn't pout. "You're preoccupied," she chides, and lets go of him to drag a finger through his semen. She reaches up to paint it across his lips, and he snaps his air-cooled teeth at her without having to think about it. There's a smirk on Irene's face when she jerks her hand away. "Isn't that counterproductive?"

The hum in her voice makes him think of butterflies in her throat, wet soggy wings flexing against the trachea. He wonders how many he could stuff down there. He wonders if he'd be able to cram more in while she's alive.

Irene presses her knuckles against the underside of his jaw, forcing his head up into a crick, and the tiny burst of pain momentarily derails Jim from his own brain. Just for a moment -- the slimmest, _tiniest_ moment -- he loses track of what he's thinking again. What he's planning. What he has so much left to do.

It’s so wonderful.

He’s so alive.

"Maybe," he says, his mouth dry from potentially too much gasping, "we should have a second round."


End file.
